Sextant Salmoiraghi Royal Destroyer "Granatiere", Royal Italian Navy, 1938

Nautical sextant produced for the Royal Navy by Filotecnica Ing. A. Salmoiraghi Milano S.A., dated around 1938, and assigned to the Royal Destroyer "Granatiere," the Royal Navy's flagship, built at the Cantieri Navali Riuniti in Palermo and commissioned in 1939. This attribution is attested by the plate embedded in the case, bearing the inscription "Cantieri Navali Riuniti – Palermo," the shipyard where the vessel was built for the Royal Navy and which also supplied and installed the onboard equipment, including this sextant.

The same plate also bears further information attributable to inventory or service markings, likely applied by the Royal Navy to identify and manage the ship's equipment. In particular, the abbreviation "N IV" can reasonably be interpreted as the serial number assigned to the sextant within the instrument suite of the Royal Destroyer "Granatiere."

The set constitutes a significant testimony to Italian military nautical instrumentation from the interwar period, characterized by the presence of historical and inventory references that highly likely document its provenance and original purpose.

The instrument is preserved in its original case and its accessories.

Salmoiraghi was a company resulting from the experience that Angelo Salmoiraghi acquired, after graduating from the Milan Polytechnic, in the Filotecnica, founded in 1865, under the guidance of the founder Ignazio Porro. In Filotecnica, Eng. Salmoiraghi held positions of manager until acquiring the property in 1873, transforming the name into „Salmoiraghi, Rizzi e C.“ for the production of optical and topographical instruments.

In 1877 the company dissolved and Angelo Salmoiraghi continued the business alone with a new company called Filotecnica Salmoiraghi. At the end of the century he had excellent collaborations: above all that of Francesco Koristka, improving the offer of optical and precision instruments. Under his guidance, the company developed considerably, until it acquired a leading role among the manufacturers of optical and precision instruments, the Regia Aeronautica and the Regia Marina.